The Tales of Hoffmann, page 39
With that, the goldsmith drew a blindingly white cloth from his pocket and did as he had said. When he now saw the bright lights of the tents gleaming through the bushes, Tusmann suddenly cried in alarm: ‘For God’s sake, honoured Herr Professor, wherever are you taking me? Not back to the town? Not to my house? Not back among people? Just God, I cannot let myself be seen! I would provoke a scandal!’
‘I do not know, Tusmann,’ the goldsmith replied, ‘why you should be acting so timorously; don’t be such a rabbit! In any event, you need something strong to drink – perhaps a glass of hot punch – or you will catch a fever from the cold. Just come along!’
The chancellery private secretary wept and wailed, spoke ceaselessly of his green face, of the vile Salvator Rosa on his visage, but the goldsmith paid not the slightest attention but drew him along with irresistible force. When they entered the brightly lit room, Tusmann covered his face with his handkerchief, as there were still a couple of people eating at the long table.
‘Why, Tusmann,’ the goldsmith said into the secretary’s ear, ‘are you thus concealing your honest visage?’
‘Ah God,’ the chancellery private secretary groaned, ‘honoured Herr Professor, you must know why: my face, which the wrathful young painter daubed all over in green –’
‘Nonsense!’ cried the goldsmith; he grasped the chancellery private secretary with a firm hand, set him before the large mirror at the end of the room and illuminated him with a candle. Tusmann gazed at it involuntarily and could not prevent himself from uttering a loud ‘Ah!’ Not only had the hateful green completely vanished, but Tusmann’s face had acquired a healthier coloration than it had had before, so that he looked in fact several years younger. In a transport of delight, the secretary sprang into the air with both feet and said in a saccharine voice: ‘O just God, what do I see, what do I behold? Worthiest, uncommonly respected Herr Professor, it is certainly you alone to whom I owe this good fortune! Yes! now Demoiselle Albertine Vosswinkel, for whose sake I almost jumped into an abyss, will certainly not hesitate to choose me for her husband! Yes, worthiest Herr Professor, you have rescued me from the depths of wretchedness! I felt a certain pleasant sensation when you were pleased to pass your snow-white handkerchief over my humble face. Oh speak: were you really my benefactor?’
‘I will not deny’, the goldsmith replied, ‘that it was I who washed away your green coloration, and you can assume from that that I am not so hostile towards you as you may perhaps think. It is only your absurd notion, which you acquired from the counsellor, that you could marry a beautiful young girl bubbling over with the joy of life – it is only this notion, I say, which I find unendurable in you; and since you now, having barely got over the tricks that have been played on you, again straightaway think about marriage, I would like to expunge this taste from you in the most emphatic way, which is altogether within my power. But I shall refrain and shall advise you instead to stay calm and do nothing until next Sunday at midday, when you will hear further. If you venture to see Albertine before then, I shall first make you dance before her eyes until your breath runs out, then transform you into the greenest possible frog and throw you into the pond here in the Tiergarten, if not into the Spree, where you can stay and croak until the end of your life! Fare you well! I have something more to do today which bids me hurry to the town. You will not be able to follow me. Fare you well!’
The goldsmith was right that no one could easily have followed him, for as if wearing Schlemihl’s famous seven-league boots he vanished from the sight of the dismayed secretary with the single bound with which he departed through the door. It could thus happen that a minute later he suddenly appeared like a ghost in the counsellor’s room and in a somewhat hoarse voice bade him good evening. The counsellor started violently but quickly pulled himself together and asked the goldsmith irascibly what he wanted so late at night; he then ordered him to be off and to leave him in peace with the absurd juggler’s tricks which he no doubt had in mind to plague him with.
‘Thus’, the goldsmith replied very calmly, ‘is the nature of man, and especially of counsellors. Precisely those who approach you with benevolent intent, and into whose arms you should confidently throw yourselves, precisely those do you thrust from you. You, dear Counsellor, are a poor, unhappy, pitiable man; I have come, I have sped through the darkness of the night, to take counsel with you as to how the mortal blow which is about to strike you may perhaps be deflected and –’
‘Oh God,’ cried the counsellor, quite beside himself, ‘O God, there has been another bankruptcy in Hamburg, Bremen or London which threatens to ruin me! Oh, stricken counsellor that I am – and now that too!’
‘No,’ the goldsmith said, interrupting Vosswinkel’s lamentations, ‘I am referring to something else. Do you absolutely decline to give Albertine’s hand to young Edmund Lehsen?’
‘What absurd nonsense!’ cried the counsellor. ‘I? Give my daughter to that wretched dauber?’
‘Well,’ said the goldsmith, ‘he painted you and Albertine very well.’
‘Ho, ho!’ the counsellor replied, ‘that would be a fine bargain: my daughter for a couple of pretty pictures! I have sent the things back to him.’
‘Edmund’, the goldsmith went on, ‘will be revenged on you if you refuse him Albertine.’
‘I should like to know’, the counsellor said, ‘what revenge that wretch, that jackanapes, can take on Counsellor Melchior Vosswinkel.’
‘That I shall tell you right away, my very excellent Herr Counsellor,’ the goldsmith replied. ‘Edmund is just now on the point of retouching your lovely picture in a way worthy of it. He is converting the cheerful, laughing face into a bitterly sullen one, with raised brows, dull eyes, a down-drawn mouth. Wrinkles on cheeks and forehead are being more deeply marked, the many grey hairs which powder is supposed to hide are being clearly indicated. Instead of the joyful tidings of your win at the lottery he is inscribing the highly distressing news in the letter you received the day before yesterday that the house of Campbell and Company of London is bankrupt; on the envelope there stand the words To the failed Alderman, etc., for he knows that six months ago you sought that dignity in vain. Out of the torn waistcoat pockets there fall ducats, talers and treasury notes, indicating the losses you have suffered. Altered thus, the picture will then be exhibited at the picture-dealer’s at the bank building in the Jäger-strasse.’
‘The Devil!’ cried the counsellor. ‘The rascal! No, he shan’t do it! I call on the police, on justice –’
‘As soon as fifty people have seen the picture inside the first quarter of an hour,’ the goldsmith continued calmly, ‘news of it will spread through the whole town, with a thousand additional details supplied by this or that wit. All the ridiculous and absurd things that have been said of you, and are still being said, will be refurbished in new and gleaming colours; everyone you meet will laugh at you to your face; and, what is the worst of all, there will be unceasing chatter about the loss you sustained through the collapse of Campbell, and your credit will be gone.’
‘O God,’ cried the counsellor. ‘But he must hand me back the picture; yes, the villain, he must do so first thing tomorrow.’
‘And’, the goldsmith went on, ‘if he did so – which I very much doubt – what good would it do you? He will etch your valued person as I have just described it on a copperplate, take many hundreds of impressions, illuminate them himself con amore and send them out all over the world, to Hamburg, Bremen, Lübeck, Stettin, even to London –’
‘Stop,’ the counsellor interrupted, ‘stop! Go to the dreadful man, offer him fifty – offer him a hundred talers if he will leave my picture alone.’
‘Ha, ha, ha!’ the goldsmith laughed. ‘You forget that money means nothing to Lehsen, that his parents are wealthy, that his great-aunt, Demoiselle Lehsen, who lives in the Breitstrasse, long ago bequeathed him her fortune, which amounts to not less than eighty thousand talers.’
‘What?’ cried the counsellor, growing pale with sudden astonishment, ‘What do you say? Eighty? Listen, Herr Leonhard, I think that little Albertine is quite infatuated with young Lehsen; I am a good fellow, after all, a soft-hearted father; I cannot resist tears or pleadings – I like the young man, moreover. He is an excellent artist. You know that, so far as art is concerned, when I like a thing I become quite foolish over it. He possesses some nice qualities, dear good Lehsen. Eighty. You know what, Leonhard: out of sheer goodness of heart I shall give him my daughter, the dear young fellow!’
‘Hm,’ said the goldsmith. ‘In that case there is something funny I must tell you. I have just come from the Tiergarten. Close by the big pond I found your friend and schoolfellow Chancellery Private Secretary Tusmann, who, in mad despair at Albertine’s rejection of him, was about to throw himself into the water. It was only with difficulty that I succeeded in dissuading him from carrying out this dreadful resolve by representing to him that you, my excellent counsellor, would be sure to keep your faithfully given word and by fatherly admonition would induce Albertine no longer to refuse him her hand. If this docs not happen, if you give Albertine’s hand to young Lehsen, your friend will jump into the pond – that is as good as certain. Think what a commotion the terrible suicide of so respectable a man would cause! You – you alone – will be regarded as Tusmann’s murderer. Everyone will ostracize you, you will no longer be invited out and if you go into any coffee-house to hear the latest gossip, you will be ejected. But that is not all. The chancellery private secretary is highly regarded by all his superiors; his reputation as a man of business is known throughout the town. Now, if you have brought him to the point of suicide through your vacillation and duplicity, it is out of the question that any official, of a legation or of a finance office, should ever enter your house again for the rest of your life – least of all those with influence. The authorities whose goodwill is needed for your business will henceforth ignore you completely. Simple commercial counsellors will mock at you, clerks will pursue you with murder weapons, and messengers, seeing you, will pull down their hats. Your title of counsellor will be taken from you, blow will follow blow, your credit will be gone, your fortune will disappear, things will get worse and worse, until at last, sunk into contempt, poverty and wretchedness –’
‘Stop!’ cried the counsellor. ‘You are torturing me! Who could have thought that the secretary would be such an infatuated ass at his age? But you are right. Let happen what may, I must keep my word to him, or I am a ruined man. Yes, it is decided, the secretary shall have Albertine’s hand.’
‘You are forgetting the aspirations of Baron Dümmerl,’ said the goldsmith. ‘You are forgetting old Manassa’s terrible curse! If Benjie is rejected, it is in him, Manassa, that you will possess your most terrible foe. He will oppose you in all your speculations. He will shun no means of curtailing your credit, he will employ every opportunity of harming you, he will not rest until he has reduced you to shame and disgrace, until the dalles which he has cursed you with has in reality entered your house. Enough: whichever of Albertine’s three wooers you give her hand to, you will be undone, and that is why I called you a poor, pitiable man.’
The counsellor ran back and forth across the room as if he had taken leave of his senses and cried again and again: ‘I am lost – a miserable, ruined man! If only I didn’t have the girl on my hands! May the Devil take the lot of them –’
‘Now, now,’ the goldsmith began. ‘I expect there exists a way of getting you out of all your difficulties.’
‘What way?’ said the counsellor, halting abruptly and staring fixedly at the goldsmith. ‘I will try anything.’
‘Have you’, the goldsmith asked, ‘ever seen The Merchant of Venice?
‘That is the play’, the counsellor replied, ‘in which Herr Devrient plays a murderous Jew named Shylock who lusts after the flesh of a wholesaler. Yes, I have seen the play, but what has it to do with me now?’
‘If you know The Merchant of Venice,’ the goldsmith went on, ‘you will remember that there appears in it a certain wealthy Miss Portia, whose father has in his will made his daughter’s hand the prize in a kind of lottery. Three caskets are set up, of which her wooers must choose and open one. The wooer who finds Portia’s portrait in the casket he has chosen receives her hand. You, Counsellor, should as a living father do as Portia’s dead father did. Tell the three wooers that, as you like them all equally, you intend to leave the decision to chance. Set up three closed caskets for the wooers to choose from, and he who finds Albertine’s picture receives her hand.’
‘What a curious suggestion!’ cried the counsellor. ‘And if I do proceed with it, do you believe, dear Herr Leonhard, that it will help me in the slightest? That even if chance has decided, I shall escape the rage and hatred of those who have not discovered the portrait and must therefore withdraw their suit?’
‘Stop!’ said the goldsmith. ‘That precisely is the most important point! See here, Counsellor, I herewith promise you most solemnly to arrange the matter of the caskets in such a way that everything shall end happily and peaceably. The two who choose wrongly shall find in their caskets, not a disdainful dismissal, as the Princes of Morocco and Aragon did, but something which shall so greatly content them they will forget all about marrying Albertine and regard you, Counsellor, as the procurer of an altogether undreamed-of good fortune.’
‘If only that were possible!’ cried the counsellor.
‘It is not only possible,’ the goldsmith replied; ‘it shall, it must all happen as I have said. I give you my word.’
At this, the counsellor abandoned all resistance to the goldsmith’s plan, and both agreed that the choosing of the bride should take place at midday the following Sunday. The goldsmith undertook to procure the three caskets.
6
It may be imagined that, when the counsellor told her of the unfortunate lottery in which her hand was to be the prize, and all her tears and pleadings failed to induce him to abandon his decision to hold it, Albertine fell into total despair. Lehsen, moreover, began to seem to her indifferent and inattentive in a way that no one who was really in love could be: he made not the slightest attempt to visit her in secret or even to send her a covert love-note. As twilight was falling on the Saturday before the fateful Sunday that was to decide her destiny, Albertine was sitting alone in her room. Wholly sunk in thought of the misfortune which threatened her, she wondered whether it might not be preferable to flee her father’s house than to stay and await the fearful fate of being forced to marry the pedantic old chancellery private secretary or, which was worse, the revolting Baron Benjie. Then, however, she suddenly called to mind the enigmatic goldsmith and the strange magical means with which he had kept the importunate Benjie away from her. She was well aware that he was on the side of Lehsen, and the hope therefore dawned in her that if anyone was to help her at the moment of crisis it would have to be the goldsmith. She felt a lively desire to speak with him and was inwardly convinced she would not be in the least afraid if he should at that moment appear in a ghostly fashion before her.
And she was in fact not in the least afraid when she became aware that what she had taken for the stove was actually the goldsmith Leonhard, who approached her and in a soft, sonorous voice began as follows: ‘Leave your sorrow, my dear child! Know that Edmund Lehsen, with whom you believe you are in love, is under my protection, that I exert all my powers on his behalf. Know further that it is I who gave your father the idea of the lottery, that it is I who have prepared the fateful caskets; now you may be well assured that no one but Edmund shall discover your picture.’
Albertine wanted to cry aloud for joy; the goldsmith went on: ‘I could have procured your hand for Edmund in other ways, but I wanted wholly to placate his fellow suitors at the same time. That too will be done, and both of you, you and your father, will be safe from any vexations from the rejected wooers.’
Albertine overflowed with passionate gratitude. She would almost have fallen at the goldsmith’s feet, she pressed his hand to her breast, she assured him that, notwithstanding the magic arts he practised, or even the ghostly fashion in which he had suddenly appeared in her room that evening, she felt nothing strange or sinister in his presence, and ended with the naive questions: what was his behaviour really all about and who really was he.
‘My dear child,’ the goldsmith began, smiling, ‘I shall find it very hard to say who I really am. I am like many others, who know fair better what people take them to be than what they really are! Learn, then, my dear child, that many take me to be none other than the goldsmith Leonhard Turnhäuser, who in the 1580s stood in such high repute at the court of the Elector Johann Georg and who, when malice and envy sought to destroy him, vanished, no one knew how or whither. Now, if such people as are usually called romantics or visionaries give me out to be that same Turnhäuser, and consequently a ghost, you can imagine what annoyance I have to endure from respectable, enlightened people, who as sound citizens and men of business could not give a rap for romanticism and poetry. Even stalwart aestheticians, indeed, close in on me, persecute me like the scribes and doctors in the days of Johann Georg and try as much as they can to spoil and embitter for me the little bit of existence I claim for myself.
‘Ah, my dear child, I can see already that, although I care for young Edmund Lehsen and for you with such solicitude and appear everywhere as a real deus ex machina, there will be many who share the view of those aestheticians and will in no way tolerate my presence in these events, since they are quite unable to believe that I really exist! As some measure of self-defence, I have never directly admitted that I am the Swiss goldsmith Leonhard Turnhäuser of the sixteenth century. These people are therefore free to assume that I am a clever trickster and to seek an explanation of any supernatural events that occur in Wiegleb’s Natural Magic or elsewhere. At this moment, to be sure, I intend a piece of work which not even a Philodorus, a Philadelphia, a Cagliostro could equal, and which, being altogether inexplicable, will remain an everlasting offence to those people; I cannot refrain from it on that ground, however, since for the completion of the story of the wooing by three famous persons of the hand of the lovely Demoiselle Albertine Vosswinkel of Berlin it is absolutely indispensable. Now then, take courage, my dear child, rise early tomorrow, dress yourself in your most becoming clothes, wreathe your hair into the loveliest plaits and await whatever may then happen calmly and with modest patience.’ Hereupon the goldsmith vanished as he had arrived.
